The present invention is a track and hold circuit for use in conjunction with electrical measuring equipment, such as multimeters.
A wide variety of electronic equipment in use today uses or generates pulses to activate or deactivate other circuitry or mechanisms. In many cases, it is important that the pulse have certain characteristics, such as a particular amplitude and width. In the field, service personnel have generally tested for the presence of such pulses by looking on an analog meter for a "tick" in the measured quantity (a slight dip or rise on the pointer). Such a technique is unreliable and inaccurate, and gives no information about pulse characteristics. Without an oscilloscope or other expensive and bulky instrument, the characteristics of the pulse remain essentially unkown.
Accordingly, the principal object of the present invention is to provide a device to adapt a multimeter to measure pulse profile.
It is a further object to provide a track and hold capability at minimum power consumption so that essentially shelf-life of an ordinary 9V battery will be achieved, i.e. current &lt;0.1 milliamper.